We’ve analyzed a dozen of reviews to help you get an average estimate of Zendesk vs Intercom functionality. While Intercom does not offer free trials, they do offer demo versions of each plan. Intercom’s Inbox organizes all of an agent’s core functions into one interface. Below, we’ve compared the usability of Zendesk’s and Intercom’s agent dashboards and administrator controls.

Here, we’ve outlined the support options that Intercom and Zendesk provide to companies using their platforms. Zendesk for Sales offers three plans, ranging from $19 to $99 monthly per user, with free trials available for each plan. Intercom offers admin full visibility and control over all company inboxes, as well as agent access controls and role management.

Why should I choose Zendesk over Intercom?

This makes it a great choice for businesses that want to provide their customers with a more personal experience. Whatever people are using to communicate with each other, whether it be online or over the phone, they expect to also be able to talk to the businesses they use with those same tools and platforms. Among the many challenges facing businesses today is the pressing need to meet their customers where they are. Zendesk would be a perfect option for businesses that are searching for a well-integrated support system. It offers a suite that compiles help desk, live chat, and knowledge base to their user base.

The solution doesn’t offer a traditional ticketing system, which can make it harder for customer service and support teams to streamline their backend operations in a familiar way. For instance, it can be challenging when customers communicate through multiple channels. All of the customer success platforms mentioned here include chatbots and allow users to respond to inquiries, collect data, and connect with customers in real-time. Intercom is best for teams that want centralized messaging and connected platforms tailored to each customer-facing team. Drift is ideal for users that sell products with longer sales cycles and plan on using chatbots for multiple use cases–i.e. This live chat software allows companies, such as ours, to have real conversations with customers.

Zendesk Chat vs Intercom – Consolidated Help vs Convenient Apps

However, the most common complaint is the pricing of some features. The bot feeds customers and employees the relevant articles upon making a query. The main difference is its connectivity with the Intercom Team Inbox.

Some objects are easier to transfer than others, depending on how similar they are between Zendesk and Intercom. For example, transferring companies is relatively easy, as both platforms have a similar concept of a company object with similar fields. Tickets have dependencies on other objects and chronological items like ticket comments that need to be preserved during the transfer. If you are currently using Zendesk as your customer support platform, you might be wondering how to switch to Intercom and transfer your existing historical customer data. Migrating from one platform to another can be a complicated and time-consuming process, especially if you have a lot of data and customizations in your Zendesk account.

Help Desk and Ticketing

Team package starts at $14 per agent per month and includes unlimited chats, a few triggers, and some additional customization options. Professional plan starts at $29 per agent per month and includes unlimited triggers, the ability to add operating hours, and chat reports. The enterprise plan starts at $59 metadialog.com per agent per month and includes every feature – from real-time monitoring to 24/7 live chat support to skills-based routing. In a nutshell, both these companies provide great customer support. I tested both of their live chats and their support agents were answering in very quickly and right to the point.

Your account settings can be accessed from the top right of you screen. If you’re looking to customize the interface to match your brand, go with Zendesk. There’s a 14-day free trial that starts directly with the plan and number of people that you need. You will have a chance to confirm your subscription before starting. After your free trial ends, Intercom’s products start at $49/mo, but if you cancel in the first 14 days you won’t be charged.

Knowledge Base

Therefore, a helpdesk with a good inbox can make your team efficient in solving problems. Live chat add-on provides you with personal customer communication (via the web, mobile, and messaging) without interrupting their experience. Once you add live chat to your website, your visitors will be able to reach you through the chat widget. By leveraging the out-of-the-box Netomi virtual agent integration, companies enhance both the agent and customer experience, while also reducing costs.

• Additionally, you can trigger incoming messages to automatically assign an agent and create dashboards to monitor the team’s performance on live chat.
• To create help articles, you can choose a template or create one from scratch, customize the template, import files or docs, and publish within minutes.
• The software even includes “collision detection,” which ensures multiple agents are not trying to answer the same call.
• Here’s a side-by-side comparison of Zendesk and Intercom’s pricing tiers.
• Some objects are easier to transfer than others, depending on how similar they are between Zendesk and Intercom.
• Zendesk, like Intercom, offers multilingual language functionality.

These are both still very versatile products, so don’t think you have to get too siloed into a single use case. We have 30+ experiences to choose from, and thousands of five star reviews. Showing 20 of 585 Marketing Automation ideas using Autopilot’s Intercom and Zendesk integration. When integrating data, you can fill some Intercom fields that don’t have corresponding Zendesk fields (or vice versa) with constant values. You can use lookup mapping to map target columns to values, gotten from other target objects depending on source data.

Zendesk or Intercom: Email features

A real killer feature would be the ability to modify the chat with your own buttons, forms with various questions and types of responses. The Intercom live chat is familiar to those entrepreneurs who have recently decided to go online and raise their own loyal client base by individually working with each one of them. In 2013, Intercom was featured on Product Hunt, where it collected a number of reviews from appreciative partners and garnered the reputation of the most efficient tool of its kind.

• Intercom’s primary focus is engaging and communicating with customers through live chat, in-app messaging, and email.
• Front combines the simplicity of email inboxes with the insights and automation of a CRM.
• Beyond this, Zendesk Chat also offers analytics so you can study your efforts and make better decisions going forward.
• This serves the dual benefit of adding convenience to the customer experience and lightening agents’ workloads.
• For small companies and startups, Zendesk offers a six-month free trial of up to 50 agents redeemable for any combination of Zendesk Support and Sell products.
• Zendesk is more robust in terms of its ticket management capabilities, it offers more customization options and advanced features like a virtual call center app.

The Zendesk chat tool has most of the necessary features like shortcuts (saved responses), automated triggers, and live chat analytics. You can enable some forms for collecting customer info on the go. Powered by Explore, Zendesk’s reporting capabilities are pretty impressive. Right out of the gate, you’ve got dozens of pre-set report options on everything from satisfaction ratings and time in status to abandoned calls and Answer Bot resolutions. You can even save custom dashboards for a more tailored reporting experience.

Overview of Zendesk products

However, agents are unable to forward a full chat transcript to customers after the conversation has closed. This would be especially useful if chats contain step-by-step instructions for troubleshooting. Your agents can jump right in and start using Intercom without a steep learning curve, which means quicker time to value. Since your agents will be using this tool daily, having an enjoyable user experience will also make it easier for them to become power users and really get the most out of the software. Intercom is a complete customer communications platform with bots, apps, product tours, etc. That is, while some may be looking for an all-in-one customer support tool, others may be looking for a more simple and straightforward option to accomplish a specific task.

• We will compare those customer service solutions in terms of functionality and price.
• Test any of HelpCrunch pricing plans for free for 14 days and see our tools in action right away.
• You can create these knowledge base articles in your target audience’s native language as their software is multilingual.
• The ticket display’s Side Conversations tab allows agents to initiate internal conversations via email, Slack, or ticketing system notes–without leaving the ticket.
• Intercom’s customer messaging platform focuses on enabling organizations to build authentic relationships with their clients throughout every stage of the sales funnel.
• Zoho’s support features include automation, AI chatbots, self-service support, and omnichannel communication.

The critical user review displayed is selected from the most helpful 1,2 or 3 star review. The three tiers—Suite Team, Suite Growth, and Suite Professional—also give you more options outside of Intercom’s static structure. Suite Team is more affordable than Intercom’s $79/month tier; Suite Professional is more expensive. Overall, Zendesk wins out on plan flexibility, especially given that it has a lower price plan for dipping your toes in the water.

Can I use Intercom on the front end and Zendesk on the back?

If you’re exploring popular chat support tools Zendesk and Intercom, you may be trying to understand which solution is right for you. Research by Zoho reports that customer relationship management (CRM) systems can help companies triple lead conversion rates. Those same tools also increase customer retention by 27% while saving 23% on sales and marketing costs.

Experience firsthand how our software can transform your customer support strategy and drive overall business success. Zendesk chatbot software is a suite of support app that helps transform your customer service into actionable customer retention and lead source via agent deployment. It has one of the most flexible plan structures, making it ideal for businesses of any size. It consists of support, chats, calls center solution, and knowledge base modules that you can upgrade separately. Zendesk makes support, sales, and customer engagement software for everyone with a quick to implement, easy to use, platform. Zendesk is more robust in terms of its ticket management capabilities, it offers more customization options and advanced features like a virtual call center app.

The platform is popular because it offers many options for companies of all sizes and budgets, making it appealing to enterprises and startups. LiveAgent is often referred to as the best Zendesk alternative for cost value. This platform acts as a help desk tool capable of receiving and managing client requests from various channels. For example, LiveAgent allows users to communicate via email, social media, telephone, or live chat.

Zendesk and Intercom also both offer analytics and reporting capabilities that allow businesses to analyze and monitor customer agents’ productivity. As a result, companies can identify trends and areas for improvement, allowing them to continuously improve their support processes and provide better service to their customers. This feature ensures that each customer request is handled by the best-suited agent, improving the overall efficiency of the support team. AI and ML make customer service functionalities like chatbots, sentiment analysis, ticket creation, and workflow automation possible. All these features are necessary for operational efficiency and help agents deliver fast, personalized customer experiences. Zendesk is a comprehensive all-in-one tool that provides companies with customer service management functions and other customer service-related features.